Frans Cronjé: This Is How The Worst Kind of White South African Looks And Lives

‘Skynheilig’ [hypocritical] is a wonderful Afrikaans word which applies to the worst kind of white South African – dissembling, dishonest, hypocritical, racist. Who are these people?

You’ll recognize them as the white university professor who complains continuously that there are too many white university professors; the white industry leader who has invested his money abroad yet accuses critics of government that they are “too pessimistic” about the future; the white rugby administrator who says there are too many white players in the Springbok team. You’ll find them among the white ‘social justice’ activists who dismiss private schools as elitist, but who send their own children there. These are people who protest from the comfort of their suburban middle class lives that more poor black people should become smallholders. They complain that white people are overrepresented in senior positions, yet occupy these jobs themselves.

When you meet these people, you should ask them why they don’t conduct themselves according to their beliefs. Ask the white professor: if you truly believe that there are too many white professors, why haven’t you resigned yet? Ask the education activists or politicians who criticize private schools why they send their own children there. Ask the land reform activist: if you really believe that property should be redistributed, then why don’t you give up your own home and property? Nobody will stop you.

You see, the truth is that these people simply tell tales. They speak of ‘transformation’ and ‘social justice’ because it makes them popular. They are delighted when they receive awards for ‘programs’ which feed black children, but are quietly thankful that their own children don’t live in remote townships. They seek the popularity attached to their political correctness.

What makes these people so detestable is the massive difference between how they live and how they believe black people should live. None of these activists will ever allow their own children to spend one night in a public hospital or send them to a B-grade public school. They will never attempt to make a living as a smallholder-farmer, but that is what black people apparently must do.

Compare this dishonesty with the other side of the white community – the majority of which are hardworking people who seek to keep their property, and believe they have earned their jobs and have singlehandedly built up their small businesses. They work hard on a daily basis to help bring about a better South Africa, but reject the politically correct hypocrisy of their ‘social activist’ neighbors, because they know there is no redistributionist shortcut to a better life for the majority of poor and black South Africans.

Only quality education, bold entrepreneurship and capital investment can give the black majority the lifestyle that the majority of whites enjoy. This is a difficult message and unfair in light of our history; it is not politically correct, but it is the truth.

Clarence Thomas, the second black man to hold the position of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, understood the hypocrisy of the white social justice movement well when he said: “I’d grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult I was starting to wonder if I’d been afraid of the wrong white people all along – where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes, but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.”

Author: Frans Cronjé is a scenario planner and the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Race Relations (sairr.org.za).